The title of Vivek Couto‘s opening address at APOS 2026 uses the word “reset.” He has a more precise term in mind.
“It’s not actually being reset,” says Couto, CEO and executive director at Media Partners Asia, which produces the annual summit running June 16–18 in Bali. “It’s actually being redefined. The whole industry is being redefined in terms of the possibilities, in terms of new revenue streams, and frankly, in terms of the cost structures that one has to adopt.”
That distinction – incremental disruption versus structural transformation – is the animating tension of the APOS agenda. The conference, now in its second decade as Asia-Pacific media’s premier gathering, has assembled executives from JioStar, Warner Bros. Discovery, Crunchyroll, iQIYI, Viu, TVING, Prime Video, Netflix, Disney and YouTube to interrogate what the business is becoming: something that can no longer be described in the vocabulary of the industry that built it.
The forces driving that transformation, in Couto’s telling, are several and simultaneous. AI has moved from conference panel discussion to operational reality. Streaming has ceased being a land grab and started producing real profits. Sport has grown into a pillar of the entertainment economy. And microdramas – short-form, vertical video built on gamified entertainment principles – have crossed from novelty into genuine consumption category.
